Some embodiments described herein relate generally to methods and apparatus for detecting signal degradation in an optical communication system. In particular, but not by way of limitation, some embodiments described herein relate to methods and apparatus for adaptively detecting signal degradation in an optical communication system using the pre-forward error correction (pre-FEC) bit error rate (BER).
With a growing demand of optical communication systems with high data rates capability, it is important to promptly detect and notify of signal degradation and failures to satisfy the latency, reliability, and availability requirements of these optical communication systems, which include optical transponders and routers. When the signal degradation exceeds given criteria, protection mechanisms are reduced or triggered to prevent traffic loss. Such criteria can be different for different optical communication systems, and can change over time for a given optical communication system.
Accordingly, a need exists for methods and apparatus to preventively detect signal degradation in an optical communication system before a failure occurs, and adaptively determine the criteria to trigger protection mechanisms and avoid or minimize traffic loss.